


don't look at the road

by losebetter



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Friendship, Haircuts, M/M, Recovery, World of Ruin, ignis and aranea as ride-or-die gay best friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-08
Updated: 2017-11-08
Packaged: 2019-01-22 04:52:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12473892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/losebetter/pseuds/losebetter
Summary: He and Aranea are frequently in and out on hunts that rarely match up, but after six years of pilfering furniture - and especially now that Ignis has taken to the kitchen again in earnest - they’ve turned a dim, unfortunate-smelling slum apartment into something resembling domestic.“Yo,” Ignis hears - he sits up, head tilted to face the entry. “Can you at least tell me if this is beer-serious before I sit down?”





	don't look at the road

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SocialDegenerate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SocialDegenerate/gifts).



> i realized that i desperately wanted fic about whoever looked at older!ignis' hair and turned him into [the beautiful queer biker punk he was always meant to be](https://i.pinimg.com/564x/2c/84/ab/2c84abe86d13b8c9aebbd00f046b18da--ignis-ffxv-ignis-scientia.jpg), so this is a fic about aranea being that person! 
> 
> i am posting it largely because i'm trying to get over my fear of posting my fic - it's gotten out of control. :(c i have like 80,000 words rotting on my hard drive and i want to be better about posting this coming year. thank you pika, jaz, & jade for reading through, and the chill XV discord for the encouragement to post! !

“Miss Highwind?” Ignis calls, after a perfunctory knock on her open door.

“Ugh,” he hears, which makes him smile. “I told you to quit calling me that, it makes me feel like - _oof_ \- like a fucking Sunday school teacher.”

Ignis snorts. After a few cursory thumps (what he’s certain is Aranea organizing clothing on her shelves) there’s a pause, and he can feel her attention shift.

“What’s up, pretty?” she asks. “You only ever pull out the ‘Miss' when you need something.”

Does he? Maybe he’s getting predictable. He only cocks his head, a bemused set to his lips.

“What I need is a second opinion,” Ignis offers smoothly, “if you’ll come with me…” He turns to get out of her doorway, then hesitates. “And put on pants, please,” he says, laughing outright when Aranea groans.

He picks his way out to the living space of their apartment, a small bag in his hand, and lowers himself onto his preferred end of the couch to wait.

Bunking with Aranea has been a lengthy series of small miracles, in Ignis’ opinion - that she planned to stay in one place for any length of time, that he rather desperately needed a home base, and that they subsequently got on like a house on fire - and even if he’ll never know precisely what the apartment looks like, he knows it by instinct now, after so many years.

They’re frequently in and out on hunts that rarely match up, but after six years of pilfering furniture - and especially now that Ignis has taken to the kitchen again in earnest - they’ve turned a dim, unfortunate-smelling slum apartment into something resembling domestic.

“Yo,” Ignis hears - he sits up, head tilted to face the entry. “Can you at least tell me if this is beer-serious before I sit down?”

Ignis’ laugh trips up out of him. “It - pardon? This isn’t serious at all.”

“Pants-serious, though,” she insists. When that only makes him cough through another laugh, her tone turns indignant. “What! You didn’t tell me anything, and you’ve got a poker face, like - “ - by this point in their friendship Ignis knows when she’s gesturing at him, a pointless endeavor that he finds privately hilarious - “…ugh. Whatever.” There’s a rush of movement, then he feels the unimpressed sprawl of her weight next to him. “Just tell me what you wanted.”

Ignis turns his head to face forward, thumbing the kit in his lap. “Ah…” This had seemed like a good idea while he’d been working earlier, a simple solution to a simple problem - but all of a sudden he feels foolish for bringing it up. He waits a moment, listens as an engine stutters messily to life outside the window.

Finally, he says, “it’s to do with my hair.”

Aranea sounds nonplussed. “What about it?”

He doesn’t bother with the _yes,_ _I’m getting to that_ , but he quirks his good eyebrow anyway. Not being able to effectively roll his eyes is one of the more recurring inconveniences of his disability this far out, but he does what he can. He holds the kit out to her. “It’s the length. I can manage the back well enough on my own, but, ah. I’m afraid I’ve lost track of the rest.”

“Mmm,” Aranea hedges as she takes the bag - Ignis’ comb, pomade, razor, and metal scissors click against one another as she checks the contents. It doesn’t inspire confidence, and her next words help even less: “Shriek not suiting you anymore, huh?”

Ignis falters. “Is it so bad?” It isn’t like he spends a particularly gracious amount of time keeping his hair clean - he’d assumed its growth was minimal. His vain streak hadn’t lasted long under the weight of such constant stress, but all of a sudden he fears he’s let his appearance fall into complete disrepair.

“Aaw, shit - no, I was exaggerating.” The kit jangles again, and Ignis relaxes. “Sorry, didn’t realize it was a thing. I thought you kinda knew.”

“No,” he replies quietly, “I don’t see how I would.”

He’s been dimly aware of the extra weight on his head, the times he gets to shower instead of simply washing himself down with a rag, but he hasn’t had the time to question it. He keeps the back neat so it can’t be pulled in a fight, but the rest is a bit beyond him.

“Good point,” Aranea says plainly. “Well, alright - what did you want me for? Tell you about it? Fix it up for you?”

Ignis sighs. “The latter, if you’ve a mind.” She grunts her agreement and he sits up a little straighter as he feels her get up.

“You know I won’t really have any idea what I’m doing.” He can feel her fingers on his temple and chin and he lets her tilt his head once, and then back, surveying him.

Ignis waves off her concerns. “I don’t care what it looks like,” he insists, trying to convince himself.

Aranea sighs and lets go of him. “Yeah, you do.” He doesn’t deny it. “Give me a minute.”

He hears Aranea set the kit down, then her footsteps stray out of the room - but instead of turning into her own bedroom the way he expects, he hears her double back to his. A number of muted thuds follow.

His lips are parted, poised to say something as she reappears, but before he can Aranea calls, “here,” and it’s all he can do to catch what she pitches right at his face. He recognizes the fabric of his bath towel and immediately pulls it across his shoulders so it’s set to catch loose hair. Against his earlier instinct, it’s a good idea; there’s a pause where he imagines Aranea is waiting for him to complain, but she moves back in front of him when he says nothing.

“This too,” she says, just a touch smug, and another towel is dumped onto Ignis’ lap, which he situates with no fuss. He recognizes the texture as being one of the rags he keeps in the kitchen.

“You’re prepared,” he comments, straightening up as he hears her digging around in his bag again.

“Yeah. So if I accidentally get your ear, you don’t bleed all over the couch.”

Ignis snorts archly. “Of course.”

“It’s a nice couch,” she continues, cheerfully setting out a few tools - Ignis recognizes the scissors and razor by sound, though the rest are lost to him. He tries to be patient, thumbing over his opposite pointer where he’s got his hands rested in his lap.

“Far be it from _me_ to - “

“What’s this?”

Ignis starts at the interruption but instinctively opens his hand, waiting, until he feels a small piece of worn plastic against his skin. Without thinking, his lips turn up.

“Ah. You found this in my bag?” he asks, mild suspicion coloring his tone, alongside genuine surprise to have the piece in his hand again.

“Towards the bottom,” Aranea confesses casually. Ignis is too distracted to consider what she might have been looking for - he runs his thumb over the familiar shape of the hair clip he knows is pale pink, a strawberry bauble still apparently intact on one end. He can’t help the rise of affection in his chest, can’t keep the fondness out of his voice.

“It was Gladio’s,” he murmurs. “Or rather Iris’.”

“And now it’s yours?”

“So it would appear.”

“Seems a little cutesy for you.”

He’d thought the exact same thing, but somehow, whenever it had appeared at Gladio’s temple, complaining had been the last thing on his mind. Nostalgia hits him like the impression of a sunrise, love for the family that had almost been his making him sigh.

“Perhaps,” he hedges. “If there are no sturdier pins in there, I may have left a few on my bureau - “

“Um, no way, I’m absolutely using these.” She nicks the pin from his palm like she’s afraid he might try to stop her.

He sighs again, all theatrics, and is rewarded with Aranea’s genuine chuckle. “If you _insist_.”

“I do.” To cap her point off, she grabs a section of his hair from where she’d parted it and slides the clip through it, pinning it up away from his face. She does it once more on the opposite side, then Ignis feels his worn brush pulling through his bangs where the tips tickle below his nose.

Too soon he hears her testing a slim pair of scissors - he doesn’t mean for her to hear his gulp, but Aranea lets out a soft cackle as she bends over his hairline, so she must’ve.

“Nervous?” she asks, all cheek, well-kept nails of her free hand digging into the skin of Ignis’ jaw.

Ignis huffs. “Wouldn’t you be?”

“Hell yeah,” she says. “Why do you think I asked if you were sure?”

He opens his mouth to respond to that - something about how he’s almost certain she _hadn’t_ asked in so many words - but he feels her fingers in his loose hair, sectioning off what she intends to cut, and he can’t voice it.

Her first few snips are almost delicate, to the point that Ignis isn’t sure she’s actually cut anything off. After that, he recognizes the swift, choppy motions of feathering, and tries not to sigh audibly with relief.

He lets his intact eye settle shut, light pieces falling over his eyelashes and down onto his lap. The pattern of it - a clip, his brush, Aranea’s capable fingers, his scissors, and the clip again -becomes a balm for his worries, the everpresent tension his shoulders relaxing, though he makes a point to keep his posture in line.

The front doesn’t take her long, which peaks Ignis’ curiosity, but he says nothing, steadying her by the hip as she reaches around to brush it out and pin it back to move over to one side and start the cycle again. For a short while, neither of them say anything, and Ignis contents himself with the whitenoise of their rooms, the bustle outside their open window, and the even breaths of his friend.

“You know…” Aranea murmurs absently, the flat side of Ignis’ trimming scissors resting against his hairline as she works in earnest, small pieces of hair flitting down over his ear and onto the towel, “when we first met, I thought you were a complete dickhead.”

It surprises such a laugh out of Ignis that she has to pull the scissors away, and Ignis makes a halfhearted effort to cover his mouth. He’s still grinning when she resets his chin and starts up again.

“At Fort Vallurey?” he replies. “You had me pegged so soon?”

“What?” she asks, sounding almost affronted. “Oh. Sheesh, that’s right, I guess I did see you there.” She makes an undignified noise somewhere deep in her throat, like she’s about to spit. “Gods. That was such a _job_ I didn’t even think about it. I meant that time… uh, way up in Cleigne?”

“The ruins at Steyliff,” Ignis recites automatically. “Gah!” He bats at where Aranea has attempted to shove one of the scissor blades up his nostril, dislodging a flurry of loose hair from his shoulders.

“Yeah, genius, that was the one,” she says, amusement winning out against the tart in her tone. She waggles the scissors with a series of metallic clicks. “And it was ‘cause you kept pulling shit like _that._ We had to work together, and the whole time I couldn’t stop thinking, _man, this guy has got some colossal stick up his ass._ You thought you were such hot shit.”

Ignis wants to laugh, but he can feel his smile waning as his brain supplies more specific memories of the trip: the whipping storm winds off the Vesperpool as the Empire had herded them to the ruins, sore and soaked through. The flash of fear that had taken hold of him at the sight of Ardyn, the determination to keep himself between the chancellor and his charges, the hollow ache in his chest at having to do it on his own…

Back then, Gladio’s departure had left him dour and snappish, the combined pressure of his absence and that of the pounding rain having felt like enough to chip his teeth where he’d been grinding them, unforgiving. But Ignis remembers the beauty of the ruins, too - how it had been enough to twist his strained mood into a bone-deep loneliness, the then-unfamiliar, petulant pull of missing Gladio terribly.

(Prompto had taken photos of the view, he knows, and wonders suddenly if Gladio ever got to see them, or if once he’d returned, that had simply been another lazy day, back in the string of them before they’d had to start counting them.)

He looks back on that version of himself - almost a different person in hindsight - with rueful fondness, and allows himself a single unbecoming thought: _Ignis of six years ago had no idea how good he had it._

“And now?” he prompts quietly, unwilling to linger.

Unfortunately, Aranea’s voice doesn’t comfort him. “Well, catching you in Tenebrae helped. You were kind of the lesser of three assholes then,” she muses - and Ignis feels like the wind’s been knocked out of him.

“Tenebrae?” he asks at a murmur. His head aches, and he realizes it’s from the sudden tension in his brow. “You were - “ he swallows hard, at a loss.

“Scientia?” Aranea asks, shifting her weight over his lap. She’s ceased the movement of the scissors, which is probably for the best.

“I’m so sorry.” Ignis feels like he’s on autopilot, desperately chasing his decaying memory and paying no heed to what’s bothered to come out of his mouth. “I’m… afraid I don’t recall.”

“Ignis,” she says, sounding oddly serious to his ear, where he can make out her voice behind the incessant pounding of his heartbeat. He feels her fingers on his temples and only then registers how untethered he feels, the whisper of a cold sweat at the back of his neck.

He instinctively reaches up to touch her forearm, on edge with everything he doesn’t know - he doesn’t push her away when he connects, merely grounds himself, puzzled by her amenability but fiercely grateful all the same.

“Ignis,” she repeats, in what he realizes is the sharp, clean tone of the Commodore. Ignis has little traditional military experience, but the comforting lull of authority, of order, loosens the vise on his lungs just so. “Hey. Breathe.”

He does, with effort, and it expedites his returning calm. The muggy evening returns to his awareness in pieces: Aranea in front of him, the couch behind, the loose hair she’s already trimmed from his head scattered over his lap. He takes in another breath.

His memories of Tenebrae - or, lack thereof - sit heavily on his heart like a sore, and one he is too morbidly curious not to turn to, as though poking a bruise. He tries to observe clinically, cataloguing snatches of darkness he can barely distinguish from his own blindness, and bitter cold interspersed with the guiding touch of Gladio’s hand at his hip. Past that is only the unbearable void of uncertainty, shadows within shadows that make him want to shrink back like a child.

Perhaps, back then, he might’ve forced that discomfort, forced himself to face whatever it was head on. But six years is a long time - too long to pretend he is invulnerable to his own actions, no matter how noble of intent. He thumbs the light off on his thoughts, puts that particular ache to bed, and the nausea fades with it.

“I’m alright,” he assures, the present filtering back into his senses like the incense they burn at night to keep the oily stench of the slums at bay. “I - apologize.”

Aranea only hums. Now that he’s paying attention, Ignis can feel that one of her hands had made a fist around the scissors, the sharp points firmly covered where they’d rested against his head - it’s a consideration that touches him.

“It’s cool.”

She’s paused in cutting his hair, and Ignis can feel where it’s still clipped back out of his face. It occurs to him that he must’ve looked ridiculous, frozen in abject panic with Iris Amicitia’s childhood hair pins affixed to his head, though it doesn’t seem as though Aranea is going to call attention to it. He’s grateful, again, for her presence.

Abruptly, he feels the pressure of her thumb over his left eyebrow, and he nearly swallows his tongue. It stings, just a little, but he can’t be sure if his skin is still sensitive or if it’s an imagined pain, a hardwired flinch.

When she brushes the pad of her thumb down the curve of where his eyebrow used to be, he’s surprised to feel the soft texture of new hair being brushed to one side.

“This is growing back in,” she murmurs. Her thumb skates over the jagged edges of his scar, and Ignis takes a second to deliberately relax the tension at his temples, his good eye slipping shut.Something still crawls uneasily in his chest when his scar is touched, but he’s done it enough himself to know that it has, at least, healed as much as he thinks it’s likely to; the swelling has long passed, and the creases of it don’t feel quite so raw anymore, the shape softened slightly into the slope of his cheek. “Does it hurt?”

“Hm?”

“The eyebrow hair. Does it feel weird?”

Ignis’ mouth quirks. “A little, I suppose. Not much.”

Aranea makes a noise, an approving grunt. “That’s good. Means your body’s getting better,” she says. “Remembering what’s supposed to go where, you know?”

They’re both quiet for a moment, Aranea having moved from his scar over toward his ear, scissors poised again.

“That almost sounds like a romantic notion,” Ignis murmurs, “coming from you, anyway. You’re usually such a pragmatist.” He laughs, wincing when Aranea snips the scissors together a few times in quick succession right next to his ear.

“I guess,” she grumbles. There’s a beat of silence until she resumes her work, then she says, simply, “I was military. You see people recover from all kinds of things.”

Ignis hums, and they both lapse into a comfortable silence again. Aranea makes a few final sweeps over the side she’d been working on, then removes two of the clips to shake both sides out, judging where they fall on his face. Ignis can’t feel the ruffle of his sideburns over his ears, but he tries not to let it bother him before he knows exactly what she’s done to him. _It’s just hair_ , he thinks, a lecture he must have given to Noct a hundred times, _it grows back_.

“Okay,” she pronounces, removing the last two clips - but when Ignis reaches up toward his head, she grabs him by the wrist. “Hey, wait, no.”

“Are you not finished?” he asks. He can practically hear her rolling her eyes as she grouses something he can’t quite parse. Feeling daring, he sticks the tip of his tongue out, swallowing a laugh when she groans again, sounding defeated.

“Watch it. Just because I don’t think you’re a dickhead anymore, doesn’t mean I can’t come up with something _way_ worse.” She lets go of his wrist, and Ignis has the nerve to fold both hands in his lap like a schoolboy, straightening his back. “Yeah, yeah. You can’t fool me with that, I know your game.”

Ignis feels his brows draw in as she talks, attention caught by a sudden rush of activity from their small side table. He can hear the cap of gel being opened, and the scent of his pomade hits his nose shortly after, but there are a few other pieces he can’t identify, and he sits on his hands in earnest.

“Hold onto your head,” Aranea instructs. Then, more sensibly: “Keep your chin straight.”

She doesn’t give any more warning than that before she begins pulling her bare hands, cool with gel, through Ignis’ hair, focused on the center all the way to the back of his skull. Ignis tries not to wince, at least familiar with the motions, but when his hair slowly disappears from where it had been resting over his forehead, he can’t help the skeptical arch of his unmarred eyebrow.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Aranea murmurs. She wipes her hand on the towel hanging over his shoulders. “And stay still.”

The pomade is next, and she works it in at his roots with sure fingers, tugging his hair back in a motion Ignis can’t precisely categorize. She pulls away, wiping off her hands again, and Ignis thinks she’s going to enlighten him, but all she says is, “nice. Alright, one more.”

The idea of a next step has him baffled until he hears the unmistakable shake of an aerosol can, and it all falls into place at once. He’s certain he doesn’t own hairspray, so this must be hers.

Her hand appears at his forehead, the line of her pinkie sitting just underneath his hairline. “Close your pretty eyes,” she coaches - then she hesitates, as if she’d forgotten. “Well…”

Ignis beats her to a laugh, but she joins in readily enough. “I mean,” she offers between burgeoning snickers, “it’s not like they can really get any worse.”

“I’d appreciate if you didn’t hinder my one mobile eye, thank you,” Ignis replies primly, but as he closes it he can feel where his smile is pulling at it's corner, following the slight creases he knows are already there.

“You got it,” she assures. “You’re almost done.” She pushes his hair up and off his forehead for a few seconds more, then gives the whole thing a brief flyover with the hairspray, paying special attention to where she’s parted it in two places and making Ignis shiver from the temperature. “ _There_.”

This time, when Ignis reaches up, he tilts his head at her, clearly waiting for permission.

“Oh, quit it,” she complains. He feels her get up, then hears her back crack as she stretches. “I’m all done, check it out.”

The first thing Ignis touches is his sideburn - or, what’s left of it. It still sits in front of his ear, but all of the extra fluff has been trimmed, leaving it thin and sleek where Aranea has put a touch of gel in it. It’s different, but not as drastic as he’d imagined.

He follows that up to where she’s thinned out the sides of the style, apparently accounting for the bulk of escaped hair scattered over his lap. It reminds him vaguely of how he used to have it cut as a child, of sitting obediently and being sheared with a careful straight razor by his uncle.

But even that isn’t the biggest change.

His eyebrows climb as he keeps reaching up another inch or so before he hits the top of it, his long fringe coiled into a relaxed coif. He follows the flow of hair, huffing out a laugh when he realizes how long it still is, though he hardly minds. By touch alone, the style reminds him of the devil-may-care rebels he used to be familiar with from the covers of dime-store novels.

Before he can work up a blush thinking about _how_ familiar, fingers idling at the nape of his neck, he drops his hand and coughs politely.

“Well?” Aranea asks, impatient.

Ignis isn’t exactly sure how to ask what he wants to ask, but he’s loathe to leave her hanging. “It’s well done,” he tries, because he can at least tell that much. It’s clean, with none of the disasters he’d been secretly afraid of.

“But?”

He hums. She knows him too well - it’s as good a reason as any to show his hand. “But… are you certain it suits me?” he asks, trying not to sound openly fearful. “It isn’t too… ostentatious?”

“Nothing wrong with standing out a little,” she argues, utterly unoffended. Ignis can feel her shifting her weight. “And not to be that gal, but if you’re worried about being a little flashy, maybe you should look into updating your wardrobe.”

Ignis only winces in reply, even though the judgment makes him laugh. He reaches for the back of his neck, distracted again by how different it feels.

“Trust me,” she insists, and Ignis finds he does automatically. “You look fucking radiant, dude. If there are any cute boys left on this dying rock, they won’t be able to keep their hands off you.”

Oddly enough, her curt words do leave him feeling confident - and warm. He can’t stop touching it after all, fingers flitting from the close-cropped sides up to the languid swoop on top. Against all logic, he really, really likes it.

“Thank you,” he says plainly. He thinks over her words again, and purses his lips. “I think.”

Aranea snorts. “You’re welcome.”

And that’s that.

* * *

 

Ignis keeps the style for longer than he ever thought he would. The upkeep isn’t minimal, but it’s simple enough to grasp, and soothing enough that he makes time every morning. He requests Aranea’s help the first few times he needs it cut, but he’s a quick learner, and as the months pass he learns the job by feel.

At first, when Aranea asks why he’s still doing it - a lazy, relaxed, _isn’t keeping your hair like that more trouble than it’s worth?_ over dinner on the couch - he can’t come up with an answer. He thinks on it, but all that comes out of his mouth is, “it’s nice to have something to do with it.”

He doesn’t have much spare time to question it - as the sixth year out from Gralea turns over to the seventh and they start to lose as many hunters to fatigue as daemons, they both take on longer jobs, occasionally away from their apartment for months at a time.

Still, he thinks, that may not have been the whole story.

When Ignis had first lost his sight, his first priority felt like all that drove him, as if the very blood moving through his body called out for it: _I will learn to fight again_. As one of Noct’s protectors it was instinct, and his body railing to regain what it had lost only spurred him on. He hadn’t recognized the uncharacteristic rage in the thought until later, too caught up in bereft denial.

(It had taken him another year of failures, of false starts without the comfort of the sun on his skin, to accept that he’d been so desperate to cut his teeth on the merciless haze of daemons because he simply hadn’t cared whether he lived or died. After that, he’d set his daggers down - when he picked them up a year later, it had been with the clearest eyes he’d ever had, blind or no.)

In that time, cooking had crept into his life again by degrees. He’d avoided it at first, of course, but even without the benefit of his eyes, his brain had been conditioned to a certain routine - and his sense of smell was stronger than ever. He could only spend so many hours walking past street vendors and their seasoned grills, ghosting in dive bars that ensconced the scents of salt and hops - even skulking across wet soil on hunts - before he felt too drawn to the trappings of his old life to ignore it all any longer.

Rooming with Aranea had been the final nail in that particular coffin. Having someone to cook for again had given the habit direction, and before long he was organizing the sparse kitchen to his needs, collecting whatever tools and spices he could get his hands on, living for the quiet thrill of a job well done, of hearing the smile in Aranea’s voice even when he couldn’t see it.

He had assumed that developing, again, these skills that had made him indispensable, had meant that he was healing from whatever had taken up residence inside him with the loss of his sight and his prince - that by finding new ways to make himself useful, he was repairing whatever damage had been done to convince him otherwise.

His hair, and his continuing determination to take care of it, is… different.

He isn’t doing it for anyone else - only for his own satisfaction, for the control he feels it gives him that he’d been missing. Somehow, for something so simple - bordering on vain - it bridges the gaps in Ignis’ life that he hadn’t even realized were there, between who he has to be, who he used to be, and the new, nebulous vastness of who he _wants_ to be. 

That confidence settles in him even when he and Aranea finally part ways - she to bolster a squad in Duscae, and he feeling drawn to Leide - and just into the tenth year, when the call finally comes, Ignis doesn’t hesitate.

* * *

 

Despite what they know is coming, it’s a quiet night at Hammerhead - Ignis can hear Gladio’s dry swallow beside him, where fate has seen to putting them on watch together.

“You look good,” he says, at length. Ignis smiles briefly, knowing that Gladio would be able to tell if he was forcing it longer - he doesn’t know anymore if he’d bother calling him on it, but…

He doesn’t dislike Gladio - far from it. He has no desire to lie to him, it’s just… _awkward._

“Would that I could say the same,” Ignis offers politely. “You do… sound well.” His hands tense up on the polearm he’s leaning on, and he’s suddenly relieved to have something to do with them. He does wish he could see Gladio, perhaps more right at this moment than in the last ten years, but it’s a craving that has little to do with his sight.

Gladio clears his throat, so Ignis tips his head up toward him.

“You…” he hears, then Gladio stalls out. He feels the ghost of a touch near his wrist, but he can’t be certain it was deliberate. “You could look. If you wanted.”

Ignis’ fingers twitch. He takes in a measured breath through his nose, trying not to visibly react - he doesn’t know the exact proximity of the other hunters, after all - but all that does is make Gladio feel even closer, the smell of sage, sweat, and woodsmoke making the lashes of his intact eye flutter behind his visor.

He can’t help but waver. “You’d let me?”

“Of course I would,” Gladio says, his voice a warm murmur. Ignis feels the brush at his wrist again, then Gladio’s thumb against the back of his hand. It drifts up to his weapon, touching without touching.

Ignis can sense the question there, plain as the day that’s stopped coming. It’s even familiar, Gladio’s open hand ready to hold his weapon for him as he sees fit, although this feels new all the same. Softer, maybe, as though Gladio is ready to support him no matter if he uses that support to cause something pain or not.

And maybe that’s what does it - the whisper of gentleness that almost feels nostalgic under Hammerhead’s harsh light fixtures, a memory of warmer, easier times, when folks touched each other without thinking.

Ignis lets go of the arm, senses the pressure of Gladio taking its weight. “All right,” he concedes, as if he could ever touch Gladio without thinking about it. “Please.”

There’s acquiescence radiating from him, filling the companionable space between them - before Ignis can lose his nerve, he reaches out, up, until his fingers alight just under Gladio’s clothed collarbone. He draws in his next breath with the sort of exquisite care he’s left untouched for what must be years, traded in for the cuts and callouses on his hands.

Once he has his bearings, he sets his other hand on Gladio’s opposite shoulder, letting his right hand wander: up and over his collars (it feels like a tee shirt under a thin coat, maybe a vest), curled around the column of his throat (heartbeat erratic under his thumb, though he puts that from his mind), and finally up to the first anomaly, fingernails scratching curiously through the short hairs under Gladio’s jaw.

“I’m growing it out,” Gladio supplies easily, apparently sensing the question.

Ignis smiles, perhaps a little too candidly, running the backs of his fingers against the well-kept hairs. “I did always get the sense that you were holding yourself back from being a wolfish mountain man,” he teases. 

Something twists in his gut when Gladio laughs - he can feel it under his hands, in the warm breath coasting next to his ear. Ignis almost feels lightheaded, but the immediate pull of Gladio’s comforting presence makes him feel like the Archaean, trapped under the burning weight of his self-imposed exile.

_Shit_ , he thinks indelicately, just barely managing to keep the crashing realization off his face. He’d always wondered, and now, hardly an hour into their reunion, he knows with certainty: he should’ve reached out to Gladio years ago.

“Yeah, well. Someone I knew used to be real picky about beard burn,” he replies playfully, coy but sounding utterly at peace discussing intimacies that Ignis had assumed to be long behind them.

Ignis chews on his lip, tracing his hands up to rest more fully on Gladio’s scruffy jaw, fingers a hairsbreadth from his bottom lip. Before he can think better of it, he strains to touch it, his thumb catching where it’s slightly damp. “Maybe he’s changed his mind,” he says quietly, heart hammering.

This time when Gladio laughs, it’s softer - but Ignis can feel his mouth curving up, pointer catching in the corner. He knows he’s flushed, his hands too warm to tell if Gladio is, too.

“Gods, I missed you.”

Ignis wants to tell him that he’s missed him ten times as much, that standing here touching him has brought him more clarity of mind than he’d been able to achieve in a year all on his own. He wants to push his hands around to the back of Gladio’s head and kiss him until the godsdamned lights go out, then again until Lucis and her people are finally overrun by the cruel shadows of the Astrals’ chess game where it hovers so frustratingly beyond the scope of human understanding - and then again, wherever they end up after that.

Thankfully his good sense wins out, and he does neither.

“The feeling is mutual,” he breathes, the veil of pleasantries a welcome crutch. Unwilling to test the limits of his resolve, his hands drift from Gladio’s lips up to his cheek, tracing the worn lines around his eyes, pinkie dragging over his familiar old scar.

He’s diligent after that, checking on the bisecting scar over his forehead and cataloguing new ones (nothing so permanent, he notes with relief), only stuttering in his touches when he feels Gladio’s eyes slip shut, long lashes so soft against his idle knuckle that his chest aches.

Finally, he reaches Gladio’s hair - and he feels his own eyebrows wing up from under his visor, shocked. He’d been able to feel the loose hair around his ear, but had assumed it to be a byproduct of the light breeze, not - not -

“Growing it out?” he repeats curiously. He traces it all the way down to his shoulder with one hand, the other cradling his ear, fingers testing the tight pull of his ponytail.

“Something like that,” he hears, Gladio’s voice gone low.

It feels _astonishing_ , clean and healthy under his hands as if he’d taken special care of it, and the desire to yank him in by it and kiss him sits as a warm weight in Ignis’ belly, so strong that his fingers curl up. They’re standing so close, he doesn’t think he’d even have to pull very hard. For all Ignis can’t see his face, there’s something in Gladio’s tone that makes him wonder - or hope -

“ _Guys_ ,” he hears, and he whips his head toward the sound of Prompto’s voice as if he’d been caught. His hands are still resting on Gladio’s chest, but Gladio doesn’t seem inclined to move them - and frankly, somewhere behind the adrenaline suddenly rushing in his ears (there’s only one reason Prompto would be out here, his shift long-over), Ignis is afraid to let go of him.

“What’s going on?” Gladio asks softly, the calm before the storm.

Sure enough, Ignis can sense Prompto shifting his weight beside them, full of nervous energy. “That was Talcott,” he breathes, “on the comm,” he adds for Ignis’ benefit.

His fingers tense up on Gladio’s chest as it rises, the breath too quiet to hear but unmistakable under his hands.

And Ignis knows he should speak, but the gravity of the situation stays his tongue, his mind blank. He doesn’t know how to ask what’s happened when it’s so _obvious_ , probably would be even if he hadn’t been been raised under the painting of the prophecy, aware of its weight since he was old enough to walk.

The other two don’t say anything, however, and he knows they’re waiting on him - what finally makes its way out isn’t a question at all:

“Well,” he says, “go on then.”

He can hear the smile in Prompto's voice - he’s glad for it, relieved that it hadn’t been lost.

“We found him.”

It breaks something in the air, charges it; it feels to Ignis like the distortion off a warm fire, rippling out with the heated realization that change was on its way - that _Noctis_ was on his way, his old center of gravity finally in reach of his orbit again. It takes everything Ignis has to not get caught up in the feeling, the knowledge that his strategist’s brain will finally, _finally_ be put to the test the way it was always meant to be.

Only one thing stops him - his fingers curl up in the material of Gladio’s coat again, urgent now.

“Gladio - “ he tries. When nothing follows, Gladio nudges him with his weapon, and Ignis automatically reaches to take it back, mute and blatantly longing.

As he sets his hand on it, though, the despair clears; he wraps his fingers around the hilt and lets out a shuddering breath when Gladio’s hand doesn’t pull away, only slides up to fit over his fist, keeping him in place.

“Iggy,” and Ignis thanks every god who might be listening - it’s been _so long_ \- “don’t go anywhere. Okay?”

His hand tightens on Ignis’ and the polearm, and Ignis can’t help but lean a little closer into his space, desperate to concede to the blind promise that whatever has called them here, they are themselves, also, free to decide the trajectory of their lives.

It isn’t strictly true, of course. But ten years without Noct has left Ignis both believing it and not, willing to take the risk.

“When we’re done,” Gladio continues, his voice the gruff susurrus it always became when he was restless, grip tightening over Ignis’ hand, “no matter what happens, we’ll meet back here. Promise me that.”

_We might not make it_ , Ignis hears.

_Don’t leave again_ , Ignis hears.

“Without hesitation,” Ignis says, trying not to let emotion win out over his determination, lest he fail to get the words out. “Come hell or high water, I’ll be here, Gladio.”

Gladio’s touch slips up to his wrist, just under the sleeve of his shirt, and Ignis suppresses a soft noise, swallowing it down past the catch in his throat instead.

“Good,” he hears. “Me too.”

**Author's Note:**

>  _listen to me, your body is not a temple. temples can be destroyed and desecrated. your body is a forest — thick canopies of maple trees and sweet scented wildflowers sprouting in the underwood. you will grow back, over and over, no matter how badly you are devastated._ \- beau taplin
> 
> (you can find me on [tumblr](http://losebetter.tumblr.com) and [twitter](http://twitter.com/losebetter) if you want to say hey! :D)


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